A Thisday interview with aviation expert, Chris Aligbe.

Nigeria and Britain have 21 frequencies on each side. But UK has been pushing for open skies with Nigeria. We should not accept open skies because we are not yet ready. As it is now, Nigeria is being exploited by foreign airlines; that is why people who are argue that we should not have national carrier make me laugh because they are not putting everything into consideration. We are being exploited; we will continue to be exploited.
The passengers are being exploited; Nigeria is being exploited and the aviation system is being exploited by foreign airlines. And in as much as they will continue like this, there is tendency that our airline operations will be wiped out. Let me tell you, we will suffer the fate of India, if care is not taken. Kingfisher, one of the thriving Indian airlines had collapsed. India is developing world class airports but their airlines are no more in the global system. The Middle East airlines have collapsed, Indian airlines and they are now operating 167 flights from India weekly. Emirates alone is operating 85 frequencies every week into India. Under such situation, they have literally killed indigenous airlines in that country.

I think the first thing we should do is to bring into being a national carrier. That is why for me; today or tomorrow I will support what the Ministry of Aviation is doing in terms of floating a national carrier. I support it hook, line and sinker because I know the tremendous benefits. We are losing so much. Capital flight is increasing, we don’t have pool of manpower again and we don’t even have competences in the core aviation area any more. We are increasingly employing foreign manpower in these areas and we are losing jobs. We are giving our jobs to other people; capital flight is increasing and we are being exploited in terms of what Nigerian passenger pays flights. Go and check what it will cost you to go from Lagos to London and check the cost of flight from Nairobi to London and you find out that it is cheaper to fly from Nairobi, which is farther away to London than from Lagos to London. The reason is that Kenya Airways is there; they will not allow you through their own pricing to charge their citizens so highly. That is because the country has a national carrier.

Those criticising the plan are throwing away the baby with the bathwater. All that the Ministry of Aviation needs to do is to make sure they do it right. In fact, we need more than two or three major carriers in this country and we can do it better. Ownership is not really the issue but I agree that at the government level, we have not shown a degree of responsibility that we require having a government-owned flag carrier that will operate and operate well.

We are not at the level of Ethiopia, in terms of being responsible. So if you find that this is the situation what do you do? What you do exactly is to make sure you float a national carrier that can be properly run. We do not need government to totally own it and control it but I sincerely believe that as a national flag carrier government should be able to own 10 per cent. South African Airways is wholly owned 100 per cent. It has some problems recently and they had to push in money to revive it. I am not saying that we should go doing that. Kenya Airways government owns 23 per cent; Air France/KLM French government owns a percentage of it. That is required to give you sovereign cover. But Nigerian government has not shown that level of responsibility, unfortunately. We need it in order to reciprocate.

Honestly, speaking the people opposing national carrier are not looking at the all the indices. I guess there is so much emotion; anti-government emotions that is driving various editorials and oppositions against the national carrier.
We should also recognise that we do not have in-country management competence to run a national carrier of high standard. We must as of necessity go outside; we have to tell ourselves the truth. We have lost this because of the gap created. The airline industry has gone so far away from us that we need to learn anew.

Today there are only two Nigerians that can run a strong airline but they cannot even run it alone. One of them can run domestic and regional airline and give you good returns and manage it properly and of course, that is Dapo Olumide. The other person can market an international airline; market it very well because he knows the strategy and that is the British Airways country manager in Nigeria, Kola Olayinka. He has been so highly trained by BA. These are the two people that have competences to manage airlines in our country.

But when it comes to managing international carrier, because of the so many things we do not have, we will have to look outside; get management consultants, we are not talking about investors. When it comes to investment, very few of them will come; in fact, we will be lucky. I will give the Minister an award if she is able to get a major airline to partner the planned national carrier as technical partner, but it is easier to get a management consultant than to get investors because of our experiences of the past. So getting a management consultant is something we should not shy away from.

Its very important but it will never happen,just like electricity,refineries,hospitals etc.

olas24u: Its very important but it will never happen,just like electricity,refineries,hospitals etc.

I hope it happens. The national airline could create close to 1 million jobs when fully operational.